A windmill farm can be seen at Osian in Jodhpur district, India’s Rajasthan State on October 6, 2021. Photo by AFP
A conservationist demands that India’s government bury renewable power lines to help protect rare birds. Protesting villages stop a wind power project to save their local forests. Farmers stop a solar power plant from taking up their pastureland.
India continues to push ahead with its ambitious plans to increase its clean energy supply. The government is now facing criticism that highlights the challenges of balancing competing goals such as going green and protecting wildlife and forests.
While the government insists that India must move away from fossil fuels that cause global warming, environmentalists claim that India is treating nature as collateral damage in its national rush to develop green power.
M K Ranjitsinh, a conservationist, said that “we aren’t against Renewable Energy.” He petitioned the Supreme Court for an order directing the Ministry of Power not to bury any electricity lines that could threaten large birds in Thar Desert in northwestern Rajasthan and Gujarat.
He told Thomson Reuters Foundation that he only said it shouldn’t be at the expense of the extinctions of bird species.
Ranjitsinh’s April 2021 petition was based on reports from the Wildlife Institute of India, which showed that solar and wind power lines were causing the deaths of birds in Thar.
A 2018 report stated that WII researchers who surveyed over 80 kilometers of overhead powerlines over a period of a year found nearly 30 carcasses of 40 species.
Both are listed as critically endangered in the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The WII states that there are only 150 bustards remaining in India, mainly in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Gujarat.
The report stated that there are many threats that are bringing the bustard closer towards extinction. However, power lines seem to be most significant.
The Supreme Court ruled that power lines that run through habitats of both species or potential habitats must be installed below the ground.
Additionally, if the court-appointed committee determines it feasible, more than 300 km of lines will need to be moved underground, and another 1,300 km fitted with diverters or brightly colored reflective devices to help birds spot them.
In December, several ministries issued an appeal to raise funds for the removal and burial of the lines. This would prevent progress on the national goal of reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2070.
Subrahmanyam Pulipaka (CEO of the National Solar Energy Federation of India), said that burying high-voltage cables would be a “huge challenge” that would cost 10x more than overhead lines.
“No land can be considered waste”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a promise to India in 2021 that India would meet half of its energy needs by 2030 by using renewable energy sources, increasing solar, wind, and other clean energies capacity to 500 gigawatts.
Renewables currently make up just 25% of national electricity supply. Demand is increasing fast.
In a 2021 report, the International Energy Agency stated that India’s power requirements would rise by 35 percent between 2019-2030 as India’s economy develops.
Debajit Palit, director, Rural Energy Program at The Energy and Resources Institute based in New Delhi, stated that finding enough space is one the greatest challenges facing the fast-growing sector of renewable energy.
According to the government, it uses most of its “wasteland” as renewables infrastructure. It also issues an atlas that shows areas available for such projects. Nearly 17 percent of the country was identified in the latest edition, which was published in 2019.
Palit said, however, that no land is a waste in real life and may have some benefit in terms of local biodiversity and grazing of cattle or other activities.
Residents of Sangnara village, Gujarat, protested to save the forest that the government had leased out to four companies in August 2021 for a planned wind farm. It was 40 turbines.
After witnessing six turbines go up, the villager’s families, who have protected the forest for 500+years, filed a petition with India’s main environment court, The National Green Tribunal, to stop the work.
The village said that the project would also include building new roads. It would reduce more than 20,000 trees and decimate pastureland, which is a major driver for climate change.
Shankarbhai Limbani, a farmer, said that there was no dispute about the ownership of the land. It belongs to the government.
“But it is a resource for us that not only provides us with a healthy environment but also gives us livelihoods, as our cattle eat it… It is a good resource. [renewable]He stated that electricity is not something we can afford, but we don’t want to lose our forest for it.”
Jeetendra Nalade, spokesperson of the Suzlon Group (one of the companies behind this project), declined to comment as the case was still before the court.
He said via email, “We are complying the Honourable National Green Tribunal’s directions in the matter.”
The other two firms were not able to respond to our requests for comment.
In a similar case, the Rajasthan high Court sided with residents in Gajner village and ordered authorities not to build a transmission tower or roads to a nearby sun-power plant.
The village protestors had been holding a 220-day demonstration against the project, which would have utilized 124 hectares government-owned pastureland.
Geeta Kumhar (Village Head) led the protests. She stated that residents supported green energy growth but didn’t want to lose their pastureland.
Namit Mehta, the local district collector, stated that the demolition of the tower and roads has already begun.
Impact assessments
Experts say India should focus on smaller projects to avoid any clashes over the rollout.
“When you plant large plants, there will be environmental and land issues.
This is why rooftop solar and distributed generation make more sense,” said Rangan Bangerjee, energy expert at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay.
Abi Tamim vanak, associate professor at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment believes that clean energy infrastructure should be subject to the same environmental impacts assessments as major building projects.
India’s government exempted green-energy developers from having to measure potential environmental and social effects of a proposed project in 2006 in order to speed up the adoption of renewable energy.
Gajner’s village chief Kumhar sees the irony in the continuing efforts of conservationists and communities to protect the natural world from India’s green hopes.
“How absurd is it that the government destroys our environment, besides denying grazing ground to our livestock – and then saying we are doing so for climate change?” She asked.
Reuters